Well, that's not entirely true either.  The judicial system is
generally pragmatic, in the sense that they do not address
issues not brought before the court.  For instance, if someone
commits a crime, a prosecutor must bring up charges.  Yes,
this concept seems rather obvious and trivial, but what it
means is that it is very easy for the body of laws which
affect any particular situation (e.g. Presidential election)
to become contradictory and for the accepted practice to
deviate significantly from what the law strictly allows.  It's
not necessarily a bad thing that the system works this way,
but it's definitely a side effect, and most people don't want
to fix what ain't broke.  Clearly, the Florida situation
demonstrates that something is likely broken.

Ern

-----Original Message-----
From: James A. Donald [mailto:jamesd@echeque.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2000 11:24 AM
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: The cause of uncertainty in the election outcome.

Because the vote is so close, the outcome depends entirely on a multitude
of judgment calls about which votes count, and which are counted, and how
they shall be counted.

The normal procedure in England and the democracies descended from England,
or imposed by English troops, is that the major parties reach agreement
before and during the vote count, on how the votes shall be counted.  In
the US however, you have a multitude of laws, laws which contradicted each
other, and contradicted actual practice.  For example a lot of perfectly
good absentee ballots that were presented by the military in accord with
the usual military practice were rejected this time because they did not
comply with the letter of the law, even though they complied with custom
and practice.

The cause of the uncertainty is judicial imperialism.

It is often said that Americans are litigious,but the cause of this
destructive litigation is judicial willingness to unpredictably overturn
existing practice.